Abortion Misinformation on TikTok: Rampant Content, Lax Moderation, and Vivid User Experiences

TL;DR

This study investigates how TikTok users encounter and interpret abortion misinformation, revealing widespread exposure to misleading content, limited effectiveness of debunking labels, and varied user responses to health-related false claims.

Contribution

It provides new insights into user perceptions and responses to abortion misinformation on TikTok, highlighting challenges in misinformation correction and implications for social media moderation.

Findings

Many users encounter herbal remedy videos for abortion

Approximately 30% believe in false abortion remedies

Debunking labels often fail to dismiss misinformation

Abstract

The scientific effort devoted to health misinformation mostly focuses on the implications of misleading vaccines and communicable disease claims with respect to public health. However, the proliferation of abortion misinformation following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade banning legal abortion in the US highlighted a gap in scientific attention to individual health-related misinformation. To address this gap, we conducted a study with 60 TikTok users to uncover their experiences with abortion misinformation and the way they conceptualize, assess, and respond to misleading video content on this platform. Our findings indicate that users mostly encounter short-term videos suggesting herbal "at-home" remedies for pregnancy termination. While many of the participants were cautious about scientifically debunked "abortion alternatives," roughly 30% of the entire sample believed in their safety and efficacy. Even an explicit debunking label attached to a misleading abortion video about the harms of "at-home" did not help a third of the participants to dismiss a video about self-administering abortion as misinformation. We discuss the implications of our findings for future participation on TikTok and other polarizing topics debated on social media.